Albatross Death Cult in Birmingham comes crashing in at No 1 in the Most Absurd Restaurant Name of 2024 chart. Let’s begin with that first, then move on to this Japanese-influenced seafood restaurant’s delicate bowls of sea bass, amberjack and trout. Or at least try to, because there’s something about that name that’s very hard to let go. Albatross Death Cult sounds less like a restaurant and more like a patchouli oil-scented support band for My Bloody Valentine or a sinister doomsday sect. Or, the most likely option, a bunch of cooks with too many tweezers, “vibes” and attitude, but nowt much in the way of proper dinner.
What is undeniable about Albatross Death Cult as a name – actually, let’s call it just Albatross from hereon in – is that it sets out its stall from the get-go. This is not Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, and nor is it a Turtle Bay. In fact, a tuned ear might well sense instantly that this is a forward-thinking, experimental, tasting-menu-only, sea-focused, edible maritime journey that will keep you in its tentacles for at least three hours. If you so much as set off to Albatross without suspecting it might be just a tad pretentious, well, the joke is on you.
And here’s the thing: the place is definitely a touch airy-fairy – but only a touch. This paean to stainless steel, cement and stripped-back brickwork offers dainty tastes of crab with elderflower and the finest, plumpest scarlet prawns swimming in a potent brew made from a stew of their own heads.
Yes, the stark website features a Samuel T Coleridge quotation – “Instead of the cross, about my neck the albatross was hung” – alongside instructions that “14 guests will gather around a monolithic kitchen counter” for a selection of dishes that will “smack you in the face like an ocean spray”. But once they’ve said their piece, taken your deposit and you’re actually inside this Grade II-listed warehouse in the city’s jewellery quarter, you’ll find that the whole experience is actually rather relaxed.
The Albatross team, which is tiny – five or so at each service – are affable, non-stuffy people, and this is omakase fine dining in Birmingham, after all, so the guests at that “monolithic bench” will definitely chat, laugh, drink sake, enjoy themselves and lap up the relentless, post-punk dark wave backing track by the likes of Lebanon Hanover, Forever Grey and Second Still. This is by no means one of those painful, quiet, deadly serious, chin-stroking affairs, although the food is as serious as can be.
Albatross is the brainwave of head chef Alex Claridge and his partner Rachael Whittle, who leads the service with great aplomb, with Piotr Szpak, formerly of Claridge’s other restaurant in the city, the Wilderness, in charge of the kitchen. Claridge has described the menu as “brutalist and ornamental”, and some dishes such as the hamachi (amberjack) with sesame and the mussels with black pepper are little more than exquisite executions of the finest products in rich, gaspingly good sauces. Sea bass with jalapeño and tuna belly with strawberry hot sauce, meanwhile, are dainty, multi-layered, bite-sized offerings that seem far too pretty to eat, but it has to be done.
Put simply, Albatross Death Cult is one of the top five seafood places in the UK today, even though it has been open for only a few months. It’s a strange, industrial space with literally no bells or whistles, but Szpak and Whittle provide a continuous and delightful conveyor belt of lovely things. There’s a perilously ornate tube of potato cannelloni filled with smoked pike roe, followed by Cornish mackerel presented sashimi-style and topped with caviar, and then more smoked roe, this time with vibrant wasabi. We ate the finest cox crab with apple, sorrel and edible petals, before moving on to chalk stream trout with a take on Thai tom yum. The final course of sushi rice ice-cream with an umami-heavy and sticky caramel dribbled on top was absolutely delicious.
The whole meal took around three hours. Was I hungry afterwards? No. Would I go back? Absolutely. Albatross Death Cult is, of course, not for everyone – where is? – and especially not if you are stool-phobic, loathe shared dining experiences, want meat on a plate with a vegetable side, and don’t care a jot for goth-tinged European industrial music, in which case you will be better off spending your money elsewhere. But this is a special restaurant run by people who are at the top of their game, and it’s exciting, challenging and the cooking is fantastic. This Albatross, then, is far from a burden. It’s flying high.
Albatross Death Cult Newhall Square, Birmingham B3 (no phone). Open lunch 1.30pm Fri & Sat; dinner 7pm Weds-Sat. Twelve-course tasting menu only, £99 a head, plus drinks and service
The next episode of Grace’s Comfort Eating podcast is out on Tuesday 1 October – listen to it here
